Santa Ana urges Latinos to get in the swim

But there are ripples of change.

To promote health and safety, Santa Ana high schools are encouraging competitive swimming and water polo among Latinos, who don't traditionally participate in those sports.

New facilities, including Olympic-size pools at two high schools, will offer places for the sports to take hold.

"Kids are playing soccer every day after school," said Fred Lammers, head aquatics coach at Valley High School. "We'd like to do that with aquatics."

The push is part of a larger effort to promote physical fitness and prevent drowning. Studies show that most Latino children nationwide cannot swim.

The community is also battling the stereotype of swimming as a sport for the white and wealthy. Less than 5% of swim club members who belong to USA Swimming, the sport's governing body, identify themselves as Latino.

At Valley High, where swimmers dived into a $1.8-million Olympic-size pool in March, the opposite is true: The aquatics program is 95% Latino, a reflection of the city's ethnic majority.

Genesis Luviano, goalie for the varsity water polo team at Valley High, has excelled in a sport that was not an obvious choice.

When she joined the team, she had to explain the basics of the sport to her puzzled family. Friends still poke fun at her for spending so much time in the pool. "Swimming is a sport?" they ask.

"My family has come to embrace swimming," Genesis said. "My mom is always here. She's the team mom."

And her sister, a sixth-grader, is taking lessons. "She's going to be better than me," Genesis said.

The school's gleaming new pool is attracting attention. It replaced a 1960s-era pool less than half its size that had been repaired so many times it was held together by an uneven patchwork of concrete.

Lammers, who has coached at the school for 31 years, said most students are reluctant to join because they don't know how to swim when they enter high school.

When Lammers tries to drum up interest for the water polo team over the school intercom, he usually follows his announcement with: "You don't have to know how to swim; we'll teach you."

"We are not in Irvine, where kids have been swimming since they were 4 or 5," Lammers said.

"We start with blowing bubbles and kickboards."

The YMCA is breaking ground this summer on a $22-million aquatics center, with a 50-meter pool that will be jointly operated with adjacent Segerstrom High School.

The center will be paid for through private donations and $8 million from the Children & Families Commission of Orange County, which funds education, health and early childhood development programs through a statewide sales tax on tobacco products.